Title: Final Fantasy XIIIConsole: PS3Genre: RPGLanguage:JapaneseCompany: Square EnixSummary:Story: 8. It actually has an interesting premise when I think about it, but it took me 5 months to finish the game for a good reason. Wasn’t that enthralling.Characters: 9. I wish the characters were more likable from the start, because it wasn’t until the LAST chapter when I really started to appreciate ALL of the characters. My favorite started off as Lightning, just because she’s hot and not so comingly-off annoying like the rest. She’s still awesome. Hope ended up being my favorite probably because of Kaji Yuuki and the whole cute shota-ness I have a weakness for. Eeeeeeeheheheh.Graphics: 10. Although it didn’t “break the barrier between gameplay and CG scenes” that they had bragged about, it was still pretty damn awesome. But yeah, still an obvious difference between game cut scenes and the full-on CG scenes. And also between the game cut scenes and the actual game “sprites”, which was also apparently in FF’s PS2 games. But eh… in comparison with other PS3 games anyway, it’s a definite 10.Sound: 9. I love Masashi Hamauzu’s music, but this soundtrack took a while to get used to. There are a lot of disappointedly boring tracks on the OST, but the good tracks get stuck in my head quite a lot. Sigma Harmonics is still my favorite of his.Gameplay: 8. There’s actual CHALLENGE in the battles. Or in some cases, just impossible enemies to beat unless you use specific strategies, which was both cool and a great annoyance. What I also hated was having to reset all of my roles assignments every time I wanted to change party members. It DESPERATELY needed some kind of memory storage option for role assignments.

Also, the battle system wasn’t fun enough to draw me into doing any of the post-game content… It got very repetitive quickly.

Replay Value: 7. There are a lot of things that are only possible after beating the game, if you’re up to actually doing it. Main complaint about this and many similar games is that there’s no unlockable cinema to enjoy the main story of the game afterwards. Also, the only point of DOING any of the post-game stuff is to get accomplishment trophies. Do I care? No.Overall: 8. It took sooooooo long for everything about the game to grow on me, and I really had to give it patience to do so. I don’t regret it so much, but I do wish it had captivated me from the start and done so throughout the game, like the other games I rate 10. Still, it was a rather amazing game. A good edition to the FF series.

Also, since I paid $80 and didn’t feel like I got everything I paid for… Should’ve waited for a $40 Japanese version range. But back then, I was still pulled into the Square Enix hype trap. Will be wary of it from now…
But it’s still a game worth playing nevertheless!